Comfort and a Warm Bed in Tulsa
by whisperinglately
Summary: Ch. 2:Beli had a smoker’s voice, throaty and deep, but still giggled . “Well, Steve. At least hop in the shower first or something.Lemme make up some coffee to get my old bones woken up. I thought you were getting married, hot shot?" ch. 3'll have dal!
1. Beli and Tim

"It's stupid, isn't it? Sirens never used to make me jump. Hell, I ran _to _the police cars half the time just to see what was going on around here. I never got paranoid before. Never cared if I got busted by the cops. Just another night in jail, just another free meal and a chance to catch up with Billy or James or…Dallas." Tim took a swig off his whiskey, not even bothering with the chaser the woman laying next to him had poured. She placed her hand on his, but he kept his tight clutch on the bottle, his hands large and knotty from breaking his knuckles so many times.

"Fuck, Beli," he said, laying the bottle on the particle board night stand. "Me and Dall used to go up to cops and just _start_ shit with them for the hell of it. The cops used to pull up to Buck's just waiting to catch someone coming out with public intox, and we were drunk as fuck and strolled right out the front door and started cussing out the cops, and Dallas just pissed right on the cop car." He started to chuckle until he saw the blue and red gleam of the cop car lights coming in through the blinds. Picking up the bottle of Jack, he took another long swig.

"God, I think I'm gonna throw up." He climbed out of bed naked, the white gleam of scars mapped across the dirt colored tan of his lean body, stretching from the corner of his hip and ass, detouring around the curve of his back. Little roads of scars lined across forearm and underlined his still-fresh, homemade tattoo on the top of his arm, bearing his last name "SHEPARD."

He paused in the doorway, his head slung across his shoulder. "Your kids ain't here, are they?"

"No, _precioso, _they're visiting their _tia _in Texas_._"

While Tim hung over the toilet seat in the bathroom, making a mess that Beli would clean up in the morning, Beli rolled a joint between her chubby, but dexterous fingertips. Her curves pressed through the faded blue cotton sheet. She was overweight, but her boobs, her hips, and her willingness to buy the boys in the neighborhood booze made her a favorite. She had moved to Tulsa for her manager's job at the grocery store. The last Harvest Grocer she worked at got hit by a tornado and she was lucky that the chain offered to relocate the workers to other stores. It was boring, though, being away from almost everyone she knew, but most of the women in her hometown gossiped all the time about her anyway. The only women she really talked to in Tulsa were not really women at all, young girls dating the gang members she often let sleep on her couch, or occasionally in her bed. She had no regrets about her life.

The boys made her life bearable here in Tulsa. They got her laid, hooked her up with weed while she hooked them up with Jack. She had learned plenty in her thirty-six years, and was a woman they actually listened to now and again. Steve Randle for instance, stayed with her for three weeks when he got into a fight with his dad and took it out on his little girlfriend. And what did Beli do? She fixed him up, sent him back to Evie, taught him well. He never hit Evie again, and she even heard they were getting married once Evie came back from visiting her friend in Florida.

She didn't think it hurt her kids any. Curly could be a little rough with Luis and Antonio sometime, but the Shepards toughened them up. They needed toughened up. Look at the side of Tulsa they lived in. The Shepard boys even stole her Tomasa clothes sometimes. She used to get made fun of for the way she dressed by the little rich pricks at school.

And Tim, he needed her right now. He climbed into bed, flicking the lights off, not even trying to kiss her again. He was done talking about Dallas for now, so she just wrapped her arms around him and let him sleep it off.


	2. Beli and Steve

It was after two in the morning when a knock came on Beli's door. It was dark and quiet outside of her small, wooden house. The hush was broken again, when her wide mouth cracked into a smile, "Steve!"

She ushered him in, chiding him for treating her house any differently from his own and not feeling free to walk in.

"I just wanted to talk to you…privately. Make sure you were alone." Steve mumbled, flushing a little bit in the darkness of her living room. She turned on a lamp, seeing he was still wearing his work clothes from the DX, grease and oil staining his clothes and his face.

Beli had a smoker's voice, throaty and deep, but she still giggled high like she did when she was sixteen. "Well, Steve. At least hop in the shower first or something. Lemme make up some coffee to get my old bones woken up. I thought you were getting married, hot shot?"

Steve sighed, his upper lip curling. He acted defiant, sneering at her suggestion, but she knew that anger made him a more passionate lover and she knew that he adored her despite his airs. "That's not what I'm here for…hey Tim's here? Didn't you here me say I wanted to talk to you alone, Beli?"

She shushed him, grabbing a wet rag to wipe off the grease mustache right under his nose. The touch of her soft hands, powdery and smooth, like the way hands feel when you unroll a condom Tim joked sometimes, seemed to cool Steve down immediately. "Shhh…honey. He's been passed out for hours. He's been drinking himself silly all week." She lightly _tsk, tsk_ed.

Beli didn't mention that it was the second anniversary of Dally's death last week. Something Tim had remembered because he had the date written down, tacked onto his bedroom wall. He had been thinking about getting the date tattooed. Tim had even gone to Dally's grave that morning, had been surprised to see Beli there cleaning up the small tombstone. She knew it almost made him choke up, although Tim never cried even when he was down-and-out drunk as he had been that day. Tim had figured that Dallas grave would get overgrown by weeds, that he wouldn't even be able to find it, that Dallas would be forgotten just as Tim would someday when he kicked the bucket, too. That the most any guy like them could hope for was that your gang buddies would drink a shot in your name after you passed. Tim had come over late that night to Beli's and hadn't left all week.

"Alright fine. But we're going in your room. I don't want Tim to wake up while I'm talking and me have to knock him back out." Steve had lowered his voice, but his eyes were narrowed in his usual impatience, stomping into the back and waiting for her to join him and ask him what was wrong.

Beli rolled her eyes, tightened her pink terry cloth robe around her waist and followed him into the bedroom shutting the door instead of just putting up a blanket in the doorway like she did sometimes to keep it cooler.

"Alright, _carino_, give me a minute." She poured herself a cup of coffee, even though it was old. Steve would start to get riled up again if she took the time to brew fresh coffee beans.

Sitting down on the bed beside him, she took a drink and cupped his face with one of her hands. "Tell me what's wrong, Stevie."

Steve didn't jerk his face away from her like he would someone else, but he couldn't look directly into her dark brown eyes either while he talked. He didn't ever talk a whole lot, and even though it was Beli, he wasn't drunk enough to talk comfortably with a broad about stuff like this.

"Evie, you know. She went to Florida, took the bus to go see Sandy. I didn't want her to go of course, but you know, I'm trying to lighten up on fighting with Evie. Just cause I think Sandy's a bitch doesn't mean that Evie can't go see her if she wants to." He looked briefly at Beli and she nodded lightly touching his arm as Steve kicked off his shoes and lay on top of the covers next to her. "That was Soda's girl you know." Beli didn't say anything, not about Steve dirtying up her sheets or about when was he ever gonna bring Soda by to meet her, because she knew that would only piss off Steve again.

"Well, Evie was talking about Sandy, and to me, it sounds like Sandy's gotten pretty bad off into drugs." He picked up Tim's bottle of whisky off the nightstand, popping off the top. "And I mean, nothing like booze or weed or nothing, Beli," she nodded compliantly as he paused, looked at her again before he took a drink. "She's really fucked up. And Sandy told Evie that she might be coming back to Tulsa, and moving into the old abandoned Belmont house with some people she knows now."

Beli _tsked_. "You know what sort of stuff those kids in that house are into, don't you?"

"Yeah." Steve took another drink. "Evie's kinda freaked out. I don't think she even wants to hang around that bitch anymore. I just didn't know if I should say something to Soda."

Beli nodded, sat up straight. "From what I heard from you, your little cutie amigo is doing pretty well for himself right now. Dating that insurance salesmen's daughter, probably gonna get a really good paying job with him if he hurries up with a wedding before he gets her pregnant or something. Ai." She took the bottle of whiskey from Steve, neglecting the lukewarm coffee. "I doubt he's gonna run into Miss Sandy if she's hanging around those people getting burnt out. She's getting a little too far gone if she's moving into that hippie house and Soda would flip out, poor boy, if he knew how far-out his little girly had gotten. Just let the past lie, Steve. Let him move on. And one more thing, don't ever call a lady a bitch. Sandy had her reasons for breaking up with Soda, and she's got her reasons for doing all those things she's doing now. We all handle our problems in different ways, Stevie." Beli gave Steve a big wet kiss on his cheek. " Now you get home and take a shower, boy, you're stinking up my house. And don't mess with Tim on your way out, he'll wake up and think I did it and I've had enough grumpiness to deal with tonight from you. I swear you're the fussiest boy I've ever met Steve. God help little Miss Evie!"


End file.
